Introducing affordable and experimental ideas of living with flowers and plants weekly. I live in the city of Chicago. The long gray brutally cold weather doesn't help my home being lively and cheerful. One solution is to display flowers and plants in the house, however often times they are very pricey. I will purchase flowers and plants weekly under $10 to dress up my house creatively.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

014: Fragrant Capsule

I had been looking for English roses to do some experimental arrangements by accentuating it's fragrance. I just happened to be at Prentice Women's Hospital to see my friends and their new born baby and realized that when I was there to give birth to my son last summer, I always wanted to stop in to the flower shop but never got the chance. Finally I got to check the shop out and it was very nice. They have a good size inventory and the store set up is really interesting. It is in the lobby and basically have no designated "retail space" but they are at one corner of the lobby and have a large exterior iron gate that separates their area and the rest of the lobby.

I went in not expecting that they would have English roses but they had one! And it's the light pink one that I really wanted get. The shop clerk told me that it smells so good. I was truly lucky:) I got one stem that had a big blossom and a couple of more buds. I also got stems of similar color Alstroemeria and some greens.

My idea came from a candle display at a flower shop in Paris called Odorantes that they had each one in separate glass domes and that captures the fragrance. I was wondering if I could capture the fragrance of English roses in a glass capsule. I only had various size glass vases and decided to use them upside down on a teacup saucer. Because of the size of the vases, I was able to make three arrangements. Though it took me about three attempts, I realized that I NEEDED to make more than one and killed some Alstroemerias.

At the end, I don't know if these were a success or not... In terms of capturing fragrance, I did succeed. It smelled so good. But, I noticed that because they are living thing, it condensates in the glass. Oh well, making unconventional object is not an easy thing to do;P